March 26, 2006
Nina Bike Check

Nina's new piece. click here for larger

Nina sent over some pictures of her newly built-up bike. Nina rides for MacNeil (seat, seatpost, frame, forks, hubs, sprocket, pegs) and Animal (bars, grips, tires), so you can be sure that most of her parts are from one of those 2 companies, and maybe the odd thing from somewhere else. We'll save both Nina and I some typing and just do this thing with pictures, which sounds good to me. In other Nina news, she moved in with Stacey Mulligan in Pittsburg, PA just before the Toronto Metro. If you're trying to keep track, she just moved up to P-Burg from Austin. Last time I talked to her she was making a desk at 3 in the morning, and stoked to be doing so, so she should be settled in by now.

Here's a few more pictures of her built-up bike:
Head-on view
Overhead view
Another side view  The car exhaust is a nice touch in this photo.

Josh Nendza has also just moved to Pennsylvania too, just outside of Philly. No doubt he'll be hitting up all the trails PA has to offer.

Tony Mortenson is kind of back on his bike... He saw the video that we put up of Bibi a few days ago, so he sent us a video that he made. Tony wanted to learn flairs, so when you live in Minnesota you might as well take advantage of the snow that's around you. Tony busted out the snowblower and blew all the snow into a big pile right beside the backyard mini ramp and let 'er rip.

Check out the video here  (640kb WMV file)

Shoe-G floats a huge alley-oop transfer. click here for larger

If you're wondering what Shoe-G's been up too lately... he's just being awesome. He sent in a sequence of him doing an alley-oop over that same big ass gap that he bailed on a little while back (if you remember that video he sent in back in Nov '05) so I put it together in a little QuickTime file.... that's a pretty big alley-oop and he ends up blowing his feet off his pedals, but at least he didn't dive into the transition like we saw in the old video.

Click here to check out the sequence  (640kb WMV file)

A couple more videos from the Toronto Metro are now online at Freecaster... good stuff. Check it here www.freecaster.com/metrojam06/

March 17, 2006
Ali gets down on his knee, and asks Lindsay to marry him

'Right proper gentleman style is how Ali runs it. click here for larger

Alistair's had himself one very busy year so far.... and it's still only March. Ali bought a house a little while back, his good friend from back home in Chester, UK Owain Clegg came over for an extended trip with Bas Keep, and this past weekend he and his girlfriend Lindsay took a trip to Lake Tahoe in California. Sounds like Lindsay was caught by surprise with what happened on the trip... Here's what Ali had to say.

"On March 13th at 10,000 ft on top of Lake Tahoe Mountain I asked my long time girlfriend Lindsay to marry me. She had no idea that I was going to pop the question, so she was very surprised. The tears were freezing to her cheeks as she said yes. We finished our perfect day of snowboarding and skiing in 2 feet of fresh powder, what an amazing day...

Congrats Ali & Lindsay from all of us here at MacNeil...

Here's a couple more pictures that Ali sent along with his email:
Ali & Lindsay, apres-ski
Blingity Bling, Lindsay rocks the ring

Gary gets the cover of Ride, and what a rad cover it is. click here for larger

We've been slacking on the updates since we got back from Toronto, we've just been really busy with post-Metro stuff, but here's a few other random things...

Gary gets the cover of the May '06 RideBMX. Of course everybody probably already got their issue back a couple weeks ago... but it's a great idea for a cover, so it's worth mentioning again. Gary also just got 3rd at the Toronto Metro behind 3-time Metro ruler Josh Harrington and Dave Mirra. There's video all over the internet from the Metro Jam, and one of the highlights of the weekend was Gary's 270 to curved wallride. If you haven't already seen the video on the Metro site, 'git on over and check it out. The full-length video from the Toronto Metro should be dropping on the Freecaster site any day now, so watch for that.

We've got a bunch of pictures to sort through from the Metro, and we're getting in some pictures from the team and what they got up to in T.O., so we'll have that up real soon.

Oh yeah, and Freimuth got the TOC of the new issue of Ride too... Opposite bottom-side icepick on the overhang at the Primo ramps while filming for the MacNeil San to Van video.

Bibi is a fucking maniac. Check out this video for proof. You tell us what's going on and the we'll both know. The only thing that we do know is that it was filmed in Alex Dropsy's backyard.

see February's news here.